Sedition

In Lord Henry Cockburns’s “Memorials of his Time”, the date March 5^th in the year 1817 appears, as a date on which Cockburn dealt with a case of sedition.

‘About this period the first preachers of sedition, who had openly practised their calling since 1793-4, ventured to begin business again; not in Scotland, transportation was still the law, but in England, which they greatly disturbed. It is usual to ascribe all that followed to the harangues of these crazy orators. But demagogues are almost always effects; very rarely causes. They are the froth that rises and bubbles on the surface, when the mass of the people ferments. The sedition of opinion, moreover, was promoted by the sedition of the stomach. The country was in deep distress;and natural dearth was aggravated by the artificial arrangements of trade and manufactures, which operated like what miners call troubles, in the transition from war to peace.

It was in these circumstances that certain judicial proceedings were taken in Scotland against several persons accused of sedition,* and of having taken and administered unlawful oaths…’

* The first adventure was with Baird and Maclaren, who were tried for sedition on the 5th of March, 1817. Jeffrey and I were counsel for one prisoner; John Clerk and James Campbell of Craigie for the other. And there occurred an excellent piece of Clerkism. Campbell called on Clerk on the morning of the trial. He found him dressing, and in a phrensy at the anticipated iniquities of the judges ; against whom, collectively and individually, there was much slow, dogged vituperation throughout the process of shaving. He had on a rather dingy-looking night-shirt ; but a nice pure shirt was airing before the fire. When the toilet reached the point at which it was necessary to decide upon the shirt, instead of at once taking up the clean one, he stopped, and grumphed, and looked at the one, and then at the other, always turning with aversion from the dirty one ; and then he approached the other resolutely, as if his mind was made up ; but at last he turned away from it, saying fiercely, " No ! I'll be d d if I put on a clean sark for them.'  '' Accordingly he insulted their Lordships by going to Court with the foul one. Not like Falkland.

  

Walter Scott dealt with seditious sentiment in quite a different manner, on at least one occasion, related by son-in-law John Gibson Lockhart in his “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott”.

‘In the spring of 1794 I find him writing to his friends in Roxburghshire with great exultation about the "good spirit" manifesting itself among the upper classes of the citizens of Edinburgh, and, above all, the organization of a regiment of volunteers, in which his brother Thomas, now a fine active young man, equally handsome and high-spirited, was enrolled as a grenadier, while, as he remarks, his own "unfortunate infirmity" condemned him to be "a mere spectator of the drills."...

A party of Irish medical students began, towards the end of April, to make themselves remarkable in the Edinburgh Theatre, where they mustered in a particular corner of the pit, and lost no opportunity of insulting the Loyalists of the boxes, by calling for revolutionary tunes, applauding every speech that could bear a seditious meaning, and drowning the national anthem in howls and hootings. The young Tories of the Parliament House resented this license warmly, and after a succession of minor disturbances, the quarrel was, put to the issue of a regular trial by combat. Scott was conspicuous among the juvenile advocates and solicitors who on this grand night assembled in front of the pit, armed with stout cudgels, and determined to have God save the King not only played without interruption, but sung in full chorus by both company and audience. The Irishmen were ready at the first note of the anthem. They rose, clapped on their hats, and brandished their shillelahs; a stern battle ensued, and after many a head had been cracked, the Loyalists at length found themselves in possession of the field. In writing to Simprim a few days afterwards, Scott says—"You will be glad to hear that the affair of Saturday passed over without any worse consequence to the Loyalists than that five, including your friend and humble servant Colonel Grogg, have been bound over to the peace, and obliged to give bail for their good behavior, which, you may believe, was easily found…’

David II of Scotland Born

David II of Scotland was born this day, March 5th, in 1324.  He had big shoes to fill, following his father Robert the Bruce as king.  Inheriting the throne at the age of five (1329), the early years of his kingship were passed under guardianship.  There were many battles with the English during these years, and in 1333, David and Queen Joan of England were sent to France for safety.

Walter Scott devotes some time to this last male of the Bruce line in "Tales of a Grandfather", here picking up with David's return from France to a chaotic homeland: 'The nobles of Scotland, finding the affairs of the kingdom more prosperous, now came to the resolution of bringing back from France, where he had resided for safety, their young King, David II., and his consort, Queen Joanna. They arrived in 1341.


David II. was still a youth, neither did he possess at any period of life the wisdom and talents of his father, the great King Robert. The nobles of Scotland had become each a petty prince on his own estates; they made war on each other as they had done upon the English, and the poor King possessed no power of restraining them. A most melancholy instance of this discord took place, shortly after David's return from France.



I have told you how Sir Alexander Ramsay and the Knight of Liddesdale assisted each other in fighting against the English. They were great friends and companions in arms- But Ramsay having taken by storm the strong castle of Roxburgh, the King bestowed on him the office of Sheriff of that county, which was before enjoyed by the Knight of Liddesdale. As this was placing another person in his room, the Knight of Liddesdale altogether forgot his old friendship for Ramsay, and resolved to put him to death. He came suddenly upon him with a strong party of men, while he was administering justice at Hawick. Ramsay, having no suspicion of injury from the hand of his old comrade, and having few men with him, was easily overpowered, and, being wounded, was hurried away to the lonely Castle of the Hermitage, which stands in the middle of the morasses of Liddesdale. Here he was thrown into a dungeon, where he had no other sustenance than some grain which fell down from a granary above; and after lingering a little while in that dreadful condition, the brave Sir Alexander Ramsay died. This was in 1342. Nearly four hundred and fifty years afterwards, that is, about forty years ago, a mason, digging amongst the ruins of Hermitage Castle, broke into a dungeon, where lay a quantity of chaff, some human bones, and a bridle bit, which were supposed to mark the vault as the place of Ramsay's death. The bridle bit was given to grandpapa, who presented it to the present gallant Earl of Dalhousie, a brave soldier, like his ancestor Sir Alexander Ramsay, from whom he is lineally descended. The King was much displeased at the commission of so great a crime, on the person of so faithful a subject. He made some attempts to avenge the murder, but the Knight of Liddesdale was too powerful to be punished, and the King was obliged to receive him again into friendship and confidence. But God in his own good time revenged this cruel deed. About live years after the crime was committed, the Knight of Liddesdale was taken prisoner by the English at the battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, and is suspected of having obtained his liberty by entering into a treacherous league with the English monarch. He had no time to carry his treason, however, into effect; for, shortly after his liberation, he was slain whilst hunting in Ettrick Forest, by his near relation and godson, William Lord Douglas. The place where he fell was called from his name, William-hope. It is a pity that the Knight of Liddesdale committed that great crime of murdering Ramsay, and entered into the treasonable treaty with the King of England. In other respects, he was ranked so high in public esteem, that he was called the Flower of Chivalry; and an old writer has said of him, " He was terrible in arms, modest and gentle in peace, the scourge of England, and the buckler and wall of Scotland; one whom good success never made presumptuous, and whom evil fortune never discouraged."...'

Sir Robert Peel

A recent post covered George Square in Glasgow.  Within the square, one finds statues of famous Scots, including Sir Walter Scott and Sir Robert Peel.  Peel was a statesman; Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during two separate stints covering nearly six years.  Peel was born on March 5, 1788.

Peel was born to an industrialist in Ramsbottom, Lancashire.  His political career began just after the turn of the century, as MP for Cashel, Ireland.  Peel was a Tory, and an ally of Sir Arthur Wellesley.

Scott and Peel were well known to each other, and there are several entries in Scott's Journal wherein Scott records dining with Peel.  On May 17, 1828, Scott enters: "...I went to Mr. Chantrey, and sat for an hour to finish the bust...".  The bust was done by Sir Francis Chantry of Norton, in North Derbyshire, England.  Chantry was one of the leading sculptors of his day, and the bust that Scott was sitting for had actually been ordered by Robert Peel.